Protecting River
by FicMaster1o6
Summary: KXK - It wasn't just River Tam the Alliance had been experimenting on. The former Operative 9 holds a special place in River's heart, and they escape together. But Operative 66 is on Serenity's tail, searching for the one who used to be his mentor...
1. Operative 9

KrossoverXKing presents

 **Protecting River**

a _Naruto_ and _Serenity/Firefly_ crossover

BTW: I don't own either

Chapter 1: The tag-along

-X-

He couldn't remember much.

Not from before.

Not from before he was in here.

In this room.

In this building.

On this planet.

Trapped.

 _Imprisoned_...

He used to be great. He used to be someone. _Mean_ something to some people. But that was before. And he couldn't remember much from before.

He remembered "9". Why? He did not know. It was simply a number that held some importance to his fragile and fractured mind before it was such.

Now?

Now...

Now he protects river. But why would they do... _this_ to someone who used to be great. Take away his abilities. Sent to protect a meandering body of water. But wait...

No...the 'r' is capitalized. He protects River. A _proper_ noun. A name. A human. A _girl_...

He had seen her before. All lanky hair and pale skin and needle marks.

And she had seen inside of him. Death followed him everywhere. He was drowning in seas of blood.

And he had felt her pain. Her powers growing faster than her body could cope. Faster than _they_ could control. Memories and secrets not her own shoved inside her mind.

And she had _experienced_ his pain. The worst of humanity performed on and by him in equal measure.

He felt pity for her. But there was nothing that he could do to help her with his energy being kept in flux by the liquid in the needles. They tell him to protect River, but force him to cause her pain?

How... _paradoxical_ of them.

He wanted to help her but he could barely move. When he got out of here, this... _Alliance_ would pay. He would get River far away from this. From them. From _everything_.

If they wished for him to protect her, then he would do so. If they didn't like the consequences, then that was their problem, really.

The door to his jail cell/hospital room slid open after the many _thunks_ of heavy steel bars subsided with nothing but a hiss of pneumatic air that lasted less than a second.

" _Naruto..._ "

That was River's voice. How he knew, he did not know. He had only ever heard her scream when they were in close proximity to each other. But what was Na-

Wait... That was his name from before. But how did River come across such information? And how did he hear her voice when her mouth did not move?

She was speaking to him in his mind, she told him. But right now that was unimportant. Her brother had come to rescue her but she had made him take a detour.

To save him...

She wouldn't leave the facility without him. She had told her brother as much. So her brother, Simon, however reluctantly, had followed her to his room.

Simon was closer now, as was River, though she wasn't screaming. He tried to yank away, but the binds the young man was loosening were still tight enough to hold him in place. He had to get further away from River or risk causing her pain. He was supposed to _protect_ her! How could he do that if them being in close proximity caused her pain. As much as it pained _him_ to do so, he had to stay away from River.

When finally he was free, Simon was flung across the room as Naruto back-flipped, his foot catching Simon below the chin. And just like that, he was across from them.

From River.

His cerulean eyes locked with her hazel ones.

" _Simon is safe_ ," she implored. " _He's here to free us... Come with me, Naruto."_

Naruto shook his head, allowed her access to his thoughts, but trying as hard as possible to keep his memories away from her mental probe lest he cause her more pain. And, as gently as a feather, she was discerning his motives, reading why he had done what he did.

Once she had done so, River smiled, a Cheshire grin flitting across her face. With the grace and silence of a feline, she crossed the room and grabbed his forearm, easily lifting him to his feet. She then did something completely unexpected.

She _hugged_ him.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her head into his chest, threading her fingers through his spiky blonde hair. Then, she looked up at him, their eyes staring into each other once more. This time, when she spoke, her mouth _did_ move.

"Come with me, Naruto... Do not leave me. You do not cause me pain anymore."

Naruto could only nod.

-X-

"It _is_ you..." The Operative whispered, though any emotional inflection that would have accompanied those words was long gone due to his training by the Alliance after his mentor, the just-found Operative 9, left to parts previously unknown. He had been sent here to investigate River Tam's _disappearance_ , but had found something much, much more interesting.

When he had been but 16, 9 had been, well, _nine_. The young Operative was considered a prodigy, and his superiors said it should be considered an _honor_ for the blonde to have handpicked him two years before he had even finished formal training.

But he had felt _insulted_. To him, it seemed like some little Officer's Brat had become obsessed with the prodigy. He had in his mind that when he saw this kid, he was going to punch him. One good time. Right in the face. Just to show everybody that he was _the best_ , and no little kid could teach him anything.

When he had entered the training room, the blonde had been sitting in the lotus position with his eyes closed. The older boy had no tell, no wasted movements, no sound except that of his fist sailing through the air drowned out by the commotion of the other sparring teams around them.

But next thing he knew was _pain_. After a blinding light made him incapable of sight, he hurt all over, then lay on his back, gasping for air while the blonde seemed to not have even moved. Even after viewing the video archives through every known spectrum, he wasn't entirely positive on what really happened.

"Just because you are older, does not mean you are wiser. It is defeat, not victory, which holds this lesson."

And that was the first of many lessons needed to be taught by defeat, most caused by his own pride. Operative 9 was patient, attentive, powerful beyond words, yet the most humble person he had ever met. 9 was the only person he respected. The Alliance simply held his loyalty, but the archives on the experiments performed on 9 were straining even that.

He did not know River Tam. He did however know 9, or Naruto as River called him. He would be making a formal inquiry as to why Operative 9 was strapped to a table and _experimented_ _on,_ though he doubted they would tell him.

"Excuse me!" Came the pompous voice of the head of the Alliance Experimental Research Division. "No one is allowed in the records room without my express permission!"

"Forgive me," the Operative said, sounding anything but contrite,"but I prefer to see the event alone, without..." He spared a glance at the chubby man before allowing a slight bit of disdain to drip into his voice. " _Bias._ "

"I need to see your clearance," he said incredulously, probably surprised the Operative had made it this far, especially with the heightened security.

"As is your right to insist. Given the situation, it is a good thing you did." He turned, placing his fingertips on the same panel he used to allow him access to the video feeds in the first place.

As was the norm, a woman's voice gave his credentials. "Operative 66. Parliamentary Override. Full Access."

"Apologies,"said the man, though it visibly pained him to do so. He stared two inches over 66's left shoulder as he spoke, too embarrassed to look his subordinates in the eye as well. "An Operative of Parliament will, of course, have our full cooperation." He walked over to double-check, just in case, before he fully committed to this. "I don't... I see no listing of rank or name."

"Then maybe we should hire another Head for this facility since you obviously cannot read English. Operative is my rank. 66 is the name the Alliance had given me once I became an Operative. I have come here to this facility to investigate the Tams and how they escaped. However, you failed to mention Operative 9 was here, and that he had also escaped."

The man paled, obviously surprised 66 had recognized him. "W-Who?"

"Do not be coy," 66 said, a hint of impatience leaking into his voice. "I was his apprentice for four years, and he taught me everything I know. Do not for one minute believe seven years and resolution that isn't high definition would make me fail to recognize him."

He had gotten in the man's face as he spoke, nearly a head taller than him. He did not raise his voice, but rather he talked down to him. As perspiration dotted his forehead, 66 walked away. He took three steps, turned, and continued pinning the Doctor with his unwavering gaze.

"River was your greatest success. A _prodigy_. A _phenomenon_... But she was only one girl. She did not have eyes in the back of her head, and she could only react as fast as her body allowed... So you took 9. You conditioned him as well, did you not? To protect River from the shadows, even if it cost him his life?"

Now sweating profusely, the man opened his mouth to protest, but 66 cut him off smoothly. "Do not lie to me, Doctor. I have read the reports. But tell me this: How did Simon Tam walk in here, take both of them, and then walk out with both of your... _star pupils_?"

"I-It's not that simple," the man stuttered.

"I am...well aware of that."

"There was _no_ way that I could-"

"No," he said, trying to placate the flustered man. "No, how could you have. Simon Tam spent his entire fortune developing the contacts to infiltrate a place that is far enough above the law to kidnap someone as decorated as Operative 9 without repercussion."

"Why does it come back to 9?" the man nearly yelled. "We need to focus on Mr. Tam, who gave up a brilliant future in medicine for _her_. It's madness, I tell you!"

66 blinked. "Madness?" He waved a hand at the feed showing River and Naruto hugging. "Have you looked at these scans carefully, Doctor? At their eyes?"

He spared a glance at the man, who was staring dumbfounded at the image.

"You, sir, have brought these two together. They are in _love_ , in point of fact." He fast-forwarded to where they escaped from Shaft 7, just as Simon looks down at River. "That is also love, albeit one between siblings. The emotion of love is something a good deal more dangerous than simple madness. Love cannot be cured. It cannot be reasoned with. It defies all logic, and those _in love_ will do whatever it takes."

"Why are you here?" the Doctor asked curiously after a tense moment of silence.

66 began pacing. "Because, like you said, the situation is even less simple than you think." He turned to the scared man. "Do you know what your sin is, Doctor?"

The Doctor seemed incredulous once again, and decided to revert back to being pompous. "I wonder how Par-"

"It is pride, much like myself oh so long ago." He reversed almost back to the beginning, back to when the Doctor had been talking to Simon in River's room, and played.

" _Key members of Parliament have personally observed this subject. I was told the Alliance's support-_ "

66 went back to 9 and River hugging, simply because his mentor was happy, no matter how fractured his mind was after what they did to him.

He turned to the Doctor. " _'Key members of Parliament'..._ Key..." The Doctor still seemed lost, so 66 elaborated. "The minds behind every military, diplomatic, and covert operation in the _galaxy_... And you, sir, put them... In a room. With a _psychic..._ "

Finally the Doctor realized the gravity of the situation, and tried to save face. "I-I-If there was some... _classified_ information that she... Sh-She never _spoke_ of it. She never told me them. I have no idea what they could be."

"Nor do I," 66 dead-panned. "And judging by her deteriorating mental state, I would say it is probably for the best." He shook his head ruefully. " _Secrets_ are not my concern, Doctor. Keeping them, however... _is_ … And you have failed to do so."

Still, the Doctor tried to stall, or perhaps even _stop_ the inevitable. 66 allowed him his futile efforts.

" _You should not_ _toy with or pity_ _the weak, Darius, nor should you taunt or torture them. They are human beings just like you and I. Treat them like you would treat any other. Even better, treat them like a superior Officer."_

Yet another lesson from 9. One of those he had immediately disregarded as asinine. Why would he remember it now?

"What-Whatever _secrets_ she might have accidentally gleaned... It's probable she doesn't even know she _knows them_. They're more than likely buried beneath layers of psychosis."

' _And you, 9? Are your lessons buried so far that you do not remember them? Do you also not remember our bond? Father and son, despite you being older than I?'_

66 realized he hated this man. For what he did to 9, he would pay. He had had misgivings about killing Alliance members when coming here, but this man, and all those who chose this as 9's lot in life, would die by his sword.

"You know," 66 began, "in certain _older_ civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would _throw_ themselves on their swords, such was their shame."

"Well, unfortunately, I forgot to bring a sword," the Doctor said sarcastically. 66, however, had been prepared for this comeback, and unsheathed his own sword with a _shing_ of metal on metal.

 _Raikiri_ , like the rest of the few weapons he had, was gifted to him by 9. The carbon-steel bladed katana with diamond-edge finish was his most prized possession, and the man who had so irrevocably damaged his mentor was now going to die by it.

"Lucky for you, I never do."

It was... _poetic._

"I would put that down right now, if I were you," the Doctor warned, his government-issued grunts surrounding 66 threateningly.

66 held out his katana hilt-first, the blade resting along his forearm. "Would you rather be killed in your sleep, like an ailing pet?"

The first grunt charged, and 66 simply reacted. He grabbed the handle with his other hand, arcing it wide to cut the man's neck, severing both arteries with a single swing. Then he changed tactics, stabbing the second bodyguard in the heart, where he had tried to fire. But the man had already grabbed the gun, and the plasma discharge caught him in the arm.

66 removed his sword, and the man slumped to the floor, dead.

The Doctor had tried to run but tripped on the blood sprayed by the first guard, allowing 66 to catch up with him much sooner than he normally would have. He jabbed into a nerve cluster under the man's ribs, paralyzing him. He calmly walked past the frozen-in-place man and politely called out to the secretary, who had been trying to sneak away.

"Young miss," he said, bending to one knee so he could angle his blade upwards towards the teetering Doctor. "I will need all the logs on behavioral modification triggers, especially those used on River Tam and the one you call Naruto Uzumaki. We will have to reach out to them and help them come back to us. No matter how far Simon Tam has-"

 _Shink!_

Finally the Doctor fell, his heart pierced through by his own momentum. He gasped for air, but it was of no use. 66 turned to him.

"I would say this is not personal, that it is only business. I would say it is a good death." The Doctor's eyes widened. "But you made this personal, so I murdered you in cold blood."As the Doctor sunk lower on the sword, his secretary began hyperventilating. "I am properly contrite, but you should be ashamed of what you have done... He was a good man. He did great things for these worlds... But you turned him into a _puppet_." Anger caused that word to drip venom in every letter. Finally, the Doctor rested on the hand guard, but still he stared at 66. "No matter what you did, for whatever reason, he will always be better than you. You are a traitor to humanity for doing this to him.

"He wanted to make a better world. _All_ of them... better worlds..."

He pushed the Doctor's body on its back, yanking _Raikiri_ out in the process. Wiping his sword free of any contaminants, 66 spoke to the secretary without once looking at her. "Young miss, I need you to make haste now. I have a feeling this will be a _very_ long journey."

He walked back to the Records Room, careful not to step in the blood, and stood behind 9, staring into River's eyes.

"If I find you, little girl, I _will_ find him... Of that I am sure."

-X-

Things were not looking good aboard the _Firefly-class_ cargo ship _Serenity_. Once again, the gorramn ship was falling apart around the former Browncoat and current Captain, Malcolm Reynolds.

His pilot Wash was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. His weapons expert Jayne wanted to wear ten guns and a baker's dozen of grenades to bed. His XO Zoe was nagging on him about everything from Wash's plans for their anniversary to the amount of food in the galley. His engineer Kaylee was holding most things together with industrial strength duct-tape and sheer force of will. His doctor Simon was as easy to read as Earth-That-Was Latin and kept trying to give him orders. _Him!_ The gorramn _Captain!_

And he wouldn't _shut up!_

"I have earned my passage-" they paused as a tremor rocked the ship, grabbing what they could to not fall, "treating bullet holes, knife wounds, laser burns..."

"Some of our jobs _are_ more interesting than others," Mal acquiesced.

But Simon wasn't done. He was _never_ done. "And you want to put my sister in the middle of that?"

"Didn't say ' _want_ '. Said ' _will_ '," Mal corrected. "And it's only one job, Doc. What's the worst that could happen?"

"She's a _17-year-old girl_ ," Simon tried. "A mentally traumatized 17-"

"She's a reader," Mal finally said, cutting Simon off as he rolled his sleeve up. "She sees trouble before it happens, which is of use to me. Besides, she's got that... _protector_... Nathan, or whatever his name is."

"It's _Naruto_ ," Simon corrected, "and I don't trust him."

An ominous rending of metal on metal grated on their ears. Mal hissed as Simon plunged the needle in harder than necessary. "Doesn't matter, Doc. We may really crash this time, and Nicole will be out of your hair for good."

Simon sighed. "It's Naruto... and he used to be an Operative, from what little River's told me. Him being here... Do you know what I've been through to keep River away from the Alliance?"

Mal pushed down his sleeve, walking over to the lockers and making a show of putting on his _brown coat_ , something Simon absently took notice of. "I do, actually, and we here have been courteous enough to keep that fact to us and ours. Yeah, he used to be Alliance, but guess where I was born?" He didn't give Simon a chance to guess. "River trusts him, and she can read his mind. What's your excuse? Is it his face? His home-world? Or is it River's faith in him?"

Simon gaped. "A-Are you insinuating-"

"I look out for me and mine," Mal said, feeling like they were finally making progress. He turned to Simon. "But I can't do their jobs for them all the time or watch them do it every time they do it. Wash flies the ship. Kaylee fixes the ship. I have to trust they can do their job without me hoarding over them every five gorramn seconds. River trusts Nolan. You have to trust her enough to do what she does best."

"It's-"

"Now you stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw. That tickles me a bit. But it also means I gotta step twice as fast to avoid them, and that means turning down plenty of jobs. Even honest ones." They began walking again, into the cargo hold. "I put this crew together with the promise of work, which the Alliance makes harder every year. Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all."He stopped in his tracks, and stared Simon right in the eyes. "If this job goes south, there very well may not be another... So here's to us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you."

-X-

Mal walked away speaking Mandarin, which Simon could barely understand, to the crew. It was a requirement on _Serenity_ , since the Alliance spoke English. And the further you went from the Core Worlds, the more Mandarin was the official language. Eventually, Mandarin would be all they spoke, and Simon would either have to have learned it by then, or be hopelessly lost in translation.

He made his way to the overhead catwalk where Naruto sat in the lotus position, stroking River's hair as she lay her head in his lap, the blonde with his eyes closed but River staring off into the ether.

"River," Simon whispered, to no avail. Naruto opened one eye, and stared at Simon with an icy glare. However, the glare soon subsided, and he removed his hand from River's hair. The brunette slowly regained focus, and a smile spread across her face.

"I know," she said just as softly, happiness in her tone. "We're going for a ride..."

-X-

He watched the intricacies of final preparation as he whittled throwing knives with a bowie knife Weapons allowed him to borrow. Most interesting was River, who flitted between cargo crates with nary a sound unless responding to other crew-members, simply to increase her stealth to a level near his.

He knew not why she tried to emulate him, when she was already perfect. But as the Mule was loaded, Captain seemed to remember something.

"Gorramnit!" He cursed, startling Engineer who was making last-minute adjustments. "This piece of _go-se_ can't hold five people, even if you got Skin 'n Bones," he hissed, waving at River and Naruto. Her hand slid into his, and a thought was passed between them.

" _Show them... I trust them._ " The blonde nodded, holding out his right hand palm up, where there seemed to be an intricate tattoo of a sun. River smiled.

"We have an idea," she told the crew. They all turned to himself and River, just as the blonde burst into light.

When the light subsided, he was covered in golden flames, a black sun on his palm while a jagged black line went up his arm, black tribal markings covering his torso and down to his knees.

"Naruto can carry me, and we will get on close to town to avoid detection." She got on him piggy-back style, the flames caressing her, reaching over into the Mule to grab a pair of goggles and sliding them on. "We are ready."

Everyone gaped at the two, but it was Doctor who spoke first.

"No. Absolutely not. River, get down before he burns you. And you," he hissed, pointing at Naruto, "don't hold my sister like that. And stop acting like you can keep up with the Mule, even if it is weighed down."

He growled. If it weren't for River, Doctor would be dead. He readjusted River so he was grabbing the tops of her thighs, then took a step forward.

Then two things happened at once that startled the crew. The River on his back faded away, while the real one stood on the other side of the cargo bay. And Doctor crumpled to the deck, holding his bloody nose. Connecting them was a trail of golden light, which soon faded away.

"Naruto," River scolded, though there was a faint smile on her face. "No."

The blonde nodded, though he didn't seem chastised. Weapons was the first to catch his bearings, surprisingly.

"He had it comin', iff'n you ask me..."

-X-

 **Woop! Chapter 1 is done. Obviously, this is a retelling of the movie Serenity, though there may be the occasional Firefly episode thrown in. The plot will be mostly the same, and will focus on Naruto/9 and River's relationship, as well as Darius/66/the Operative searching for him. And since I have Netflix and own the movie, I can get my references straight from the source.**

 **Ja Ne!**


	2. Attack on Serenity

KrossoverXKing presents Chapter 2 of:

 **Protecting River**

a crossover between _Serenity/Firefly_ and _Naruto_

Enjoy!

BTW: First of it's kind!

AN at the bottom.

-X-

"Do you understand your part in this, little one?" Mal asked as they prepared to leave the ship, River on Naruto's back as planned. Simon wasn't pleased about it, but Mal was captain, and the job wasn't supposed to carry any extreme danger.

It was more of a test, than anything.

The lithe, hazel-eyed brunette slowly turned her head to him, resting it on her protector's shoulder.

There was an awkward pause.

"Do you?"

Mal checked his ammo one last time before giving a cocky… _self-assured_ grin. "This is what I do, darlin'."

Then the ominous tone she asked that reached his senses, and a chill raced up his spine. "...this is what I do," he reaffirmed.

Her protector, N-something, muttered in a language he didn't know – probably made up – and River gave a ghost of a smile as she settled in for the ride.

"Spare clips in the rear hatch," Jayne called out, always the one to make sure their weapons were locked, loaded, and lubed to perfection. He was rough around the edges, but soft on guns.

Mal nodded.

"We should be getting there right at Sunday Worship," Zoe smirked. In small towns, the church was always far away from the main street, which the bank would be on. "Shouldn't be any crowds."

"Well," Mal said, smirking as well, "if Fanty and Mingo are right about the payout, it should be a _sunny day_ for us."

As the Mule warmed up, he could hear Simon's now-nasally voice as he spoke to his _meimei_. He had given up on trying to stop her from riding on the back of the blonde she always seemed to be with, but was now giving her more advice.

"Now, River… Stay behind the others. If there's fighting, drop to the floor or run away." He glared at the kid who had apparently vowed to protect her even at the cost of his own life, before giving the other members of the shore party a quick glance.

"It's okay to leave them to die," he added in a stage whisper.

River raised her eyebrows slightly, but otherwise gave her brother a deadpan stare as she hugged the one male she let touch her without stipulation. Even Simon had to be performing medical tests in order to do so.

"Doctor," Mal said, finally fed up with his resident medic. When Simon was paying attention to him, Mal looked him straight in the eye. "Not only is Natalie with her, she is under the protection of all on this ship as long as she is a part of this crew..." To offset the serious undertone, as he made a habit of, he added: "I swear, if anything happens to your sister – anything at all – I will get very, very…choked up about it."

Simon stared at him incredulously.

"Honestly… There could be tears."

His peace said, Mal gunned it.

With the blonde giving the medic one last passing glance, he flared as bright as the early morning sun before taking off after the Captain.

"Don't mind the Cap'n, none, Simon," Kaylee comforted her secret crush, barely able to contain her blush. "I know he won't let anything happen to her..."

Simon just shook his head as he watched the retreating specks of dark and light.

"They'll be back afore you can spit," Kaylee promised, though her ever-present smile dimmed as he turned and began walking away. "Well… Not that you...spit..."

She'd never been good at flirting.

He'd never been good with girls.

-X-

The streets were deserted when they reached the town around 11 AM. Jayne wasn't impressed.

As was expected of an Outer Rim planet, it looked more like a settlement than any respectable city. Set in a fertile valley, five main roads converged at the center of town, where a spiral-shaped statue was the tallest thing around.

It probably made sense to them.

Smaller side-streets radiated outward from the statue, connecting the main streets.

The main road adjacent on their right led to a winding path up a rather sizable hill, where the church stood.

"What're we gonna find here worth the price of a turd?" He muttered rhetorically. He knew Mal was a little _kuangzhe de_ , but he doubted the man would stoop so low as to go door-to-door asking for valuables, 'specially seeing as most people would be at church. The Outer Planets were like that.

If you didn't have God, chances are you didn't have nothin'.

"Security payroll," Mal explained simply. "Alliance don't have the manpower to 'enforce the peace' on every Outer Rim planet, so they hire out to private firms, who won't work for credit… They get paid in cashy-money."

Mal smirked, and Jayne couldn't help but smirk as well. Born as the son of a slave-owning Plantation Owner on a Mid-World planet, Mal had it all: the cut-throat intelligence of an In-Worlder, and the no-nonsense depravity of an Out-Worlder.

"Once a month, it rests here," he finished, pointing to the unassuming-looking building across the street. Sure, it looked like the others, but that was just for show.

Alliance Banks and Alliance Tanks used the same material.

"Won't it get back to the Alliance, anyhow?" Jayne asked. Sure, they were pirates, but they weren't well-known ones, which was a boon when the Alliance caught up to them.

Crybabys don't work if you're on their Blacklist.

Latching up their ship so a strong breeze – or a weak crook – didn't take it away, the five of them prepared for the job.

"No private firm would ever report the theft of their own payroll," Zoe explained. "They'd appear weak, and might lose their contract."

So an 'if you can't defend your money, you can't defend a planet' deal. The Alliance lackeys'll just have to go without alcohol for a month. They could take a small amount out of the bank's reserves, if they were lucky, but they'd doubtless have to pay back whatever they borrowed over subsequent paychecks.

"Yep… We're as ghosts in this," Mal confirmed as he hopped out.

"Shiny," Jayne agreed as he, the blonde, and the girl left the Mule as well, they having got on once the town was in sight. He opened his jacket, a finely-tuned M5K strapped to his chest. "Let's be bad guys."

-X-

"Hands on knees and heads bowed down!" Mal called out as he pushed both doors open, Zoe leveling her 1878 Wyatt Earp shotgun at the camera just inside the door. Despite being almost a millenium old, Jayne made sure it would fire every time, just like this time.

She could afford to be seen on camera, her records having been destroyed during the Unification War. Mal was the registered owner of a _Firefly_ -class light cargo ship, Jayne was a notorious mercenary with dozens of unconfirmed felonies, and River and Naruto were secret military projects that the Alliance didn't know they had.

Best to keep it that way.

As the bank's owner pulled out a shotgun to defend his interest, Mal removed and aimed his modified Taurus Model 85 between the man's eyes. It's longer barrel was one of the things that made it more intimidating, the other being the noticeable ammo clip.

Anything more than a six-shooter was rare...and intimidating.

When a young hero-type tried to bum-rush Mal from behind, Jayne was quick with a clothesline, followed by dropping the kid on his head to knock him out. Having felt something under his shirt, Jayne quickly tore the plaid button-down apart, revealing an Alliance-issued bulletproof vest, while a badge declared in three languages(English, Mandarin, and Arabic) that he worked in security.

"This is the place," he confirmed, glancing at Mal, who had the owner place his gun down and join the other dozen people who were unfortunate enough to require the bank's services this Sunday morning.

"Now yall'll wanna be lookin' very intently at your own belly-buttons," Mal ordered, before nodding to Zoe. "If heads start to rise, my temper will rise, and violence. Will. Ensue."

Zoe opened the door, allowing Naruto, and then River, to enter. He always went first into an unfamiliar place.

"Now you've probably guessed we mean to be thievin'," Mal continued, pacing, "but what we're after is not yours, so…" Here, his voice lowered. "Let's not have no undue fuss."

"She's locked up," Jayne called out, fiddling with the device that monitored and controlled the vaults' doors.

As Mal went over to his trigger-happy crew member, a barefoot River glided through the prone patrons, Naruto crouched on a teller's desk as his eyes flitted back and forth from River to all the potential threats she faced.

River tilted her head, Naruto's mere presence allowing her to discern individual thoughts and intentions as opposed to copying and pasting everyone's life story into her head.

Slowly her hand rose, and a thin finger pointed out a suspect.

When she heard no movement, she glanced over at Zoe, who cut her eyes to the man questioningly.

River nodded slowly, as if Zoe was stupid, though a playful eye-roll and a small smile removed all negativity from it.

Zoe made her way behind the indicated man, cocking her shotgun as it rested on the back of the man's head.

"Do you know what the definition of a hero is?" Zoe asked rhetorically. "Someone who gets other people killed..."

And just like that, Naruto was in front of the man, divesting him of his Colt 1911 .22LR, the semi-automatic pistol a tactical flat black.

The blonde stared at it oddly, before placing it in the front waistband of his pants as its previous owner had done.

Zoe nodded at him, and he went back to watching River from a counter.

"Look it up later," Zoe said as she removed her shotgun.

"Ain't we a big, happy family," Mal commented to the non-adult-male members of the group, just as the head teller opened the safe under the watchful eyes of Jayne.

Since the owner could be anybody, the Alliance always appointed a head teller, who actually opened the safe. The owner simply got a cut of the profits and a few other perks for allowing the Alliance to use their bank for such transactions, as money could only be sent from bank to bank, not account to account like credits.

The safe opened, and it was about the size of a shoebox. It wasn't even a quarter full.

"At last, we can give up this life of crime and retire," Zoe deadpanned.

Mal rolled his eyes and pulled a lever hidden right above the door.

The sound of stone grinding against stone accompanied Jayne yelping as the floor slid out from beneath him.

"Hey!" Jayne yelled indignantly.

"Browncoats, eh?" the head teller mused. "Fought for independence from the big, bad Alliance?" The sarcasm was clearly evident in the old man's voice. "Petty thieving ain't exactly soldier's work, now is it?"

Mal just brushed the obvious goad off. "War's long over," he said quickly, having never liked talking to Alliance loyalists. "We're all just folk, now."

"Listen up!" Mal called down into the subterranean passage. "We're comin' down there to empty that vault!"

"You have to give me your authorization password," a young male voice called back.

Jayne was quick to give his password, by releasing the safety of his M5K and firing a half-dozen rounds into the floor.

Automatics were terrifying.

"O-Okay!" the voice called out as the cartridges bounced down the stairs, prompting Mal to walk down, Taurus in hand.

The room was cylindrical, dug out of the limestone and reinforced with steel beams every five feet for around forty feet. Near the back was a glass safe as tall as the room and about ten feet on each side.

Inside were two three-foot-tall stacks of cash.

Mal swung around, a cold pit of dread forming in his stomach.

River audibly twitched upon gleaning a conversation outside.

" _I heard it, Mama… A Repeater."_

" _It did sound awful lot like gun blasts. Maybe you ought run n' tell Lawman."_

 _The woman's scream and the Reaver's were one and the same as they fell to the ground…_

River screamed as she fell back from the backlash of the memory, but it was only the fact that Naruto arrived next to her in a literal split-second that she didn't fall bonelessly to the unforgiving concrete floor.

"The hell was that?" Jayne questioned as Naruto held River's limp form. "She alright?" he asked the blonde, with something akin to genuine worry in his voice. "What's goin' on?"

" _Reavers..._ " River finally managed out, and it sent Jayne running to his captain.

The ships, looking like they flew out of the pit of Hell, itself, were covered in blood and spikes, while skeletons and sometimes fresh bodies were analogous to holiday ornaments on the rusty, torn up abominations.

Tow cables fired out, a few to anchor the ships, but a dozen to allow the bastardized versions of humanity to land on solid ground. They would not hesitate to kill you, rape you, and peel your skin off to be used as coat lining. And if you were lucky, it would be done in that order.

-X-

"The leg is _good_ ," Mal said, trying to help the guy out. "It'll bleed plenty, and we avoid any necessary organs."

"I was thinkin' more of a graze," the man tried, presenting his forearm, causing Mal to sigh. This guy wanted a cool scar, not the ability to keep his job under scrutiny.

"You don't wanna make it look like ya just gave up," Mal said.

"N-No. Yeah, I getcha."

' _Do you?_ ' Mal asked.

"MAL!" Jayne yelled, his voice echoing in the oddly acoustic room.

Mal turned from the man, muttering under his breath. "Every _gorram_ heist, he starts screamin' my name..."

"Mal!" Jayne yelled again, now at the bottom of the stairs. "Reavers!"

Mal paled.

"Girl's pitching a fit," he explained as he went to help Zoe. He had been charged with guarding the door to make sure no one left to report what was going on until after they left, but Reavers made sure reporting a robbery was very low on the priority list. They had all heard River's whisper. "Either they're here now, or they're coming soon… Her boyfriend's tryin'ta get her ready ta leave now."

Mal turned to the safe guard, pointing at the passageway. Zoe and Jayne knew what they were doing. "Does that lock from the inside?" He asked hurriedly.

"U-Uh, yeah… Yeah."

"Then you get everyone in here," Mal ordered. "All those people upstairs? You bring them downstairs and seal it. Lock it and don't open it. Not until you don't have no air. Understand?"

Those people, in this small area, had a little less than two days worth of air. The Reavers usually left after about that long.

"I-I… B-but I..."

"Get them. Inside. THE VAULT!" Mal roared, Jayne and Zoe sweeping past them.

-X-

"Anybody see 'em?" Jayne asked, his M5K sweeping down the street both ways. He only saw people running, but from or to he did not know.

He, Zoe, and Mal jumped in the Mule, and surprisingly so did the one whom River had singled out.

"Please, take me with you," he pleaded as Zoe began driving off, though the Mule was moving much slower.

They didn't get _that_ much money.

Mal turned in his seat, aiming his modified Taurus at the center of the man's chest. "Get off," he ordered coldly. He had so much to pay for to repair _Serenity_ , including himself there were eight full-time crew members and two part-timers, and the simple cost of fuel to travel through the inky black bit between planets.

He didn't need another responsibility. He hadn't lied to Simon. It was hard finding jobs with low risk, high pay, and wouldn't affect honest folk. The bank had been a gamble. He had no idea how many people were packing, and how many were willing to use them. So he needed Simon's _xiaomeimei_ , if only to make sure he wasn't shot in the back.

"Last warning," Mal said dangerously. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blonde and brunette pair watching him with a calculative gaze, as if they knew _exactly_ why he didn't want this-this... _Jimmy_ to come with them.

"Please!" he begged. "I can help! I know how t-glak!"

Jayne's large hand wrapped around the man's throat, before pushing him over the low side of the Mule.

Mal fired as the Reavers converged on him.

"You was takin' too long," Jayne explained needlessly. "Dem Reavers were damn-near on top of us."

"Yeah," Mal said softly, turning back around. "You're right."

Zoe wasted no time in leaving the town, and Naruto flared like the sun to keep pace.

Just like the song, ' _If you're going through Hell, keep on going_ '.

-X-

The Land Stalker belched thick black smoke from its large exhaust ports as it slowly caught up to the Mule. Naruto and River had no choice but to dodge the strikes, after seeing how ineffective Captain and Weapons were.

As Naruto got close to the Mule, a three-foot-wide hand made of the golden fire grabbed River, before placing her in the Mule. It slowed instantly, and the Land Stalker overshot its target.

"Hey, Blondie!" Jayne yelled. He held his hands up in the obvious ' _What are you doing?_ ' gesture.

Even as Wash came to pick them up, even as Jayne ran out of ammo and forgot where he placed the extras, even as River watched him intently, a golden streak of light headed straight towards the Reaver ship.

Right before they collided, the streak of light that had once been a blonde Operative changed course, and it was now revealed that two large hands came from the cloak of fire he wore, grasping the Land Stalker by its large intake.

The two hands bent the metal into an unrecognizable shape to obtain purchase, and Naruto's combat sandals gouged the ground to find purchase and halt the forward momentum of the two-ton ship.

Two more arms sprouted from the cloak, tearing deep gouges in the metal as they hurled the ship into a cliff face.

It exploded.

His protection of River done, Naruto raced back to the Mule and grabbed the brunette back just as _Serenity_ came over the rise.

-X-

"River?" Simon asked once everyone was on board. "Are you alright? Did he do anything to you?"

Who ' _he_ ' was did not need to be explained.

"I swallowed a bug," River said simply.

" _Is everyone here?_ " Wash called out over the comm. " _What's going on? ...hello?_ "

He was all alone in the cockpit, and not a sound could be heard from where he sat.

"We're all good, baby," Zoe replied to her husband. "No casualties. Anybody following?"

" _That's a negtive. Clean getaway._ "

"Set course for Beaumonde," Mal said to Wash. "We gotta give Fanty an-ugh!"

Mal fell to the ground due to a sucker punch from Simon. He quickly scrabbles up, yelling in Mandarin, only to remember Simon couldn't speak a lick of it.

He was perfectly fine with yelling in English.

"You stupid, selfish son of a whore," Simon seethed, getting in the captain's face. He felt something pressing against his stomach, and saw the brass of his Taurus gleaming between them, mostly hidden by Mal's coat.

"I'm a hair's breadth from riddlin' you with holes, Doctor," Mal growled back.

Simon switched tactics to mocking. "Oh, 'One simple job,' you said! 'She'll be fine,' you promised!"

"She _is_ fine!" Mal yelled indignantly. He and her buddy Nathan made sure of that. Hell, even Jayne was worried for her. And Zoe made sure she kept her head down once the blonde had placed her in the skiff, just in case. "'Cept for being still crazy, she's a picture of health!"

"Won't for them, we'd be Reaver Chow," Jayne muttered. He didn't like admitting to relying on others.

"She felt them coming," Zoe confirmed. "And he destroyed the Land Stalker..."

Simon, however, ignored all of it. He didn't care about the former Operative – his nose still throbbed painfully – but River was his sister. And he'd be damned if she was put in danger like that again.

"Never again," Simon said with an air of finality. "You understand me?"

-X-

Naruto silently grabbed River's wrist and led her from the cargo hold. Heightened negative Human emotions were one of the things he was programmed to keep her away from. Her empathetic abilities were heightened to feverish levels, which could trigger a psychotic break.

The cycle fed off of itself. Heightened negative emotions triggered her empathy, which put her more in tune with the emotions, which strengthened the empathy, which heightened the emotions… It was a cycle that could not be broken except by leading her away from the source(s) by one without strong negative emotions.

It was that or her mind would overload on negativity and she'd be driven to suicide...if they were lucky.

They hid in the air ducts.

-X-

Zoe and Mal sat in his cabin, unaware of the two pairs of eyes – one hazel and the other sapphire – watching them from the air duct.

"I think things'll glide a great deal smoother without River and Simon aboard," Zoe stated, defending Mal's actions in the cargo hold. "But how long do you think they'll last?" she asked. Beaumonde was a planet where if you weren't rich, you weren't anything.

"Doc made his call," Mal said, defending himself. If Simon had said he wanted to be dropped off at any planet between them and their destination, Mal would've oblidged.

"Yeah," Zoe agreed.

"They's as babes in the woods when we took them in… Come a time when a man has to cut loose; learn to stand on his own."

"And Naruto?" Zoe asked. "He'll follow River; that's fact… But Simon won't let him near River."

"So?" Mal asked, clueless.

Zoe sighed in exasperation. "He's _never_ going to stop watching over River… When they eat, he won't be invited, and he won't leave her to find his own food."

"Is he _that_ devoted to her?" Mal asked disbelievingly.

Zoe just nodded as the two in the air duct hugged tightly.

"What do you want me to do?" Mal wondered. "Doc's leaving, so we'll need a new one that we hafta pay, Nora's leaving, and he had some serious firepower… And what about Kaylee?"

"What about her?" Zoe queried, the tangent catching her flat-footed.

"She's smitten with the Doc, and not so smitten with me since she sees it like I ran him off..."

Zoe kept quiet.

"I don't know what I'm doing out here anymore," Mal admitted, waving a hand haphazardly, his voice thicker than normal. "That man back there… In the War, we never left a man behind, but now I keep thinkin' that's why we lost. I'm trying to stay honest, but since we brought _them_ with us, we can't take Alliance jobs no more. We get a job… They know my preferences, but I barely look at them anymore. They could send me to stealin' medicine from the Out-Worlds and I wouldn't know 'till we're there. I'm not even sure I _wouldn't_ do it... We get a job, we gotta make good."

Zoe had wanted to ask her captain about the man they left to die; though Jayne was the one to throw him off, he only did so because Mal _ordered_ the man off. But Mal had done it himself.

"Sir," she began softly. Mal lifted his eyes from the table to her own. "I don't disagree with you… While it would have been nice to save that man, we'd just be worse off. Even in the war, our squad came before the Browncoats… And right now, _Serenity_ is our squad."

Mal could feel his eyes blur, though not a single tear fell.

The last time he shed a tear was when the Browncoats surrendered to the Alliance.

The last time he cried, was during an argument with his father before he left to the Outer Rim to join the Browncoats.

"Th-thank you, Zoe..."

His second had no reservations about tears as she soaked his shirt while they hugged. It was the first time since the war that he had opened up to her.

-X-

 **Took me forever to get access to the TV to watch this movie. Apparently, no one wants to watch a movie if you're going to keep pausing it.**

 **Go figure…**

 **But then my laptop opened a video player last night for no reason, so I used it, instead.**

 **I read that the movie actually happens a few months after the show, except for the first part with the Operative, of course. But here, the show is inter-spaced throughout the movie, with the movie's ending being the ending for this story, aside from an epilogue. I will use various episodes, though they may not be in order, and it will not be all of them. Such will start next chapter.**

 **The episode will be either _Bushwhacked, Out of Gas,_ or _Objects in Space,_ probably the latter.**

 **Ja Ne!**


	3. Serenity: Out of Gas

KrossoverXKing presents the next chapter of:

 _ **Protecting River**_

a _Naruto_ and _Serenity/Firefly_ crossover

Enjoy!

Serenity: Out of Gas

-X-

Serenity drifted in the black, listing to port in comparison to the galactic plane. It had been all but abandoned for some time now. The entire ship was lit solely by running lights.

The bridge was deserted.

The mess was empty, but with dishes scattered about.

Red lights flash intermittently as a warning sounds. " _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once._ "

Every hallway, hideaway, and gangway was without its usual eclectic crew members, but it was obvious they had left in a hurry.

Mal falls hard, unable to stop himself as he slams into the grated floor of the cargo hold. Sweat drips from his forehead despite the cool metal. Pained gasps spill past his lips as he lay there, just struggling to stay awake, all alone in the ship.

In his ship.

His baby.

" _A real beauty, ain't she? Yezzir. A right smart purchase, this vessel. Tell you what: you buy this ship, treat 'er proper... She'll be with ya for the rest a your natural life._ "

The airlock opens audibly, and a late afternoon sun blinds him completely. He doesn't notice the two people walk in until they're talking...

-X-

Mal struggles with the door to open it those last few inches, allowing Zoe a view of the dust-covered cargo hold. A self-satisfied smirk is at home on his face, while Zoe's expression is one of resigned neutrality.

"Well?"

Her unimpressed gaze finally lands on her future captain. "You paid actual money for this, sir? ...On purpose?"

Mal's gaze darts around, looking for the slight that has disillusioned her to the ship. He comes up empty.

"What? Come on. Seriously, Zoe. Whaddya think?"

"Honestly, sir? I think you got robbed."

Her straight face perplexes him. "Robbed? What? Nooo." He waves his hands to present the ship once more. "What do you mean?"

"It's a piece of _feiwu_." Again she uses a straight face.

" _Feiwu_?" Her gaze now bores into the very depths of his soul. He falters. "O-okay. She won't be winning any beauty contests anytime soon... But she _is_ solid. Ship like this'll be with ya 'til the day you die."

"'Cuz it's a deathtrap."

Mal's cheeks tinge at the speed her comebacks...come back. "That's not... You are very much lacking in imagination," he accuses.

"I imagine so, sir," she retorts swiftly, with a straight face and level tone. He realizes he's getting nowhere fast.

Time to switch tactics.

"C'mon," he motions. "You ain't even seen most of it. I'll show you the rest." She reluctantly follows as he walks towards the other end, where a door leads farther into the ship. "And try'ta see past what she is, and on to what she can be..."

"What's that, sir?" she asks.

"Freedom, is what," he states grandly, glad she's following alone.

"I meant what's _that_?" She points to the ground, a disgusted look on her face. Mal visibly shudders once his eyes land on the pile of... _whatever_ that is...or was.

"Oh... Yeah. Just step around it." As she obeys, he mutters: "Somethin' musta been living here..."

They continue onward.

"I tell ya, Zoe. We'll find a mechanic, get her running again. Hire a good pilot. _Gui_ , maybe even a cook. Live like real people... Small crew, them that's feel the need to be free. We'll take jobs as they come...and we'll never be under the heel of nobody ever again. No matter how long the arm of the Alliance might get, we'll just hafta get ourselves a little further."

Zoe, however, was stuck on the details. "Get her running again?"

Mal blanched. "Yeah..."

"So...not running now?"

Mal decides carefree is the name of the game and smiles as he continues onward. "Not so much, no."

"Ah," Zoe says with obvious sarcasm.

"But she will," Mal counters as he tries to remember the layout. "And I already know what I'm gonna call her. Got a name all picked out..."

-X-

Mal, still disoriented, barely registering as a hand reaches down in offering. Cerulean eyes stare back as he glimpses his benefactor. "Na...," is all he can manage with so little air.

The pain is ever-present as the blonde half-carries the captain, his other hand gripped on the needed part Mal had been carrying.

His shoulder smarts loudly, but he knows it could be worse, so he bites back the louder noises and words that threaten to spill out.

He wonders how he's still here.

" _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once_."

Right now, it doesn't matter how. He's just glad the boy came with his _xiaomeimei_ those months ago.

-X-

They had been on their way to Beaumonde in the Kalidasa System, and it just so happened to be Simon's birthday. Even Inara and Shepard Book were there, having been picked up in Newhope after the _Serenity_ crew had finished their robbery job in Aphrodite, both in the Georgia System. Then they skirted the Rim to avoid any space lanes; unless you were going to Blue Sun, you didn't venture too close to the Rim.

It was rare for them all to be able to sit together and eat...as a family. For that was what the crew of the Serenity was. River sat between Kaylee and Mal, who was at the head of the table, facing the bridge. Naruto was sitting on the counter behind River, silently watching the raucous crew.

The main part of his conditioning was to remove as much emotion from him as possible, while still making him able to protect River. Fear was removed: it would do no good if he hesitated to take a bullet for her. Loyalty was bolstered: to Naruto, River's word was law. If she told him a blue sky was purple, he would shift his own interpretation of the visible spectrum to accommodate his ' _mistake_ '. Yellow would now be green, red would be orange, etc., etc.

Such a clarity of mind due to the lack of conflicting or 'useless' emotion made him a focus for River, even with her fragile psychic psyche.

"Got a course set?" Mal asked as Wash entered. The pilot nodded, smiling as his wife presented food.

"Yeah. Pretty easy, actually. We're skirtin' Reaver territory, so I turned the alarms up to full just in case. We shouldn't see a single ship the whole trip, so I had the alarm be triggered by the radar in case an IFF we don't know gets in range."

"We're in no rush," Mal said casually as he picked at a roll. "So long as it's an easy, languorous journey, I'll be peaches."

The conversation continued, Mal even being cordial with Inara, though Jayne was still slightly antagonistic towards Simon, treating him like the cousin that was so distantly related, they may as well have been two different species.

Inara, in return, treated Jayne like one would a dog that didn't know when to stop humping peoples' legs.

The mood took a turn for the better as Kaylee returned from the kitchen, holding a cake with about half a dozen candles on it.

"Care to make the first incision, Doctor Tam?" Kaylee asks. Then, softer: "Happy Birthday, Simon."

Everyone at the table, even Jayne, clapped as the cake is set in front of their resident medic, for different reasons.

Simon is obviously stunned. "Well this is... H-How did you know?" He glances over at the brunette, who has already passed the moment by and filed it under "mildly interesting". "River, did you...?"

"' _Day_ ' is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles and is thus non-applicable." She glances up at him for a brief second, hazel and chestnut meeting for a fraction of time before she once again resumes slowly eating her food. "I didn't get you anything."

"Seems a fresh warrant for your arrest came up on the cortex. Had your birth date attached right to it," Mal explained for him.

"Really?" Simon asked worriedly. If his bounty was re-sent ' _fresh_ ' as Mal explained, it was because his bounty went up. A bounty going down took much longer to circulate.

Mal gave a friendly nod.

Kaylee successfully returns attention to the still-burning candles, and it's just in time for the lights to dim, flicker, and cut off.

Even the engine was silent.

The crew was now silent.

The hum of the engine returned, as well as Jayne's ability to say what everyone else is thinking.

"The hell was that?"

No answer was forthcoming, so Kaylee turned towards the hallway.

"Maybe just a hiccup. I'll go check it out."

Wash also stood. "I should take a look at the helm."

River is staring straight ahead, past the table, past _Serenity_ 's hull, past the 'Verse, itself...and yet, not even past her own lashes.

" _Fire..._ "

Simon glances at his sister, then at the cake in front of her with the still-lit candles. He still doesn't understand her ability.

"Yeah, right..." He leans forward, intent on blowing out the candles.

It's not the fire River is talking about.

Kaylee opens the door as an explosion sounds from the back of the ship, and Zoe, Naruto, and Mal are on their feet in an instant.

A rush of flames engulfs the hallway, heading towards the paralyzed engineer. Zoe shoves Kaylee out of the way, into Simon who breaks her fall with his body. The concussive blast from the difference between the enclosed hallway and the open Mess sends Zoe into Naruto, who had been protecting River. Zoe is sent sliding across the table, while the blonde mirrors her underneath the table.

"Zoe!" Wash screamed, rushing back to his wife's side. Inara and Book tend to Simon and Kaylee as Mal shuts the door just in time to deny the second blast of fire entrance.

River is on her knees. "Fire! Fire!" she yelled, but now was not the time. He turns to Jayne. "Seal off everything that leads below deck. Do it now!"

Jayne rushed to do just that as Mal made his way to the bridge. Once the needed lights turn red, signaling a closed door, Mal inputs the necessary command, and the cargo doors open.

Simon, now working on Zoe, stands up. "I need my medkit..."

The aft door has a near-inferno raging behind it. The fore...

Jayne barred his exit that way.

He idly wondered if fire was in a talking mood today.

"Where you think you're goin'?" Jayne asked, unmoving.

"Zoe's hurt," Simon explained. "I need my supplies." The medbay was right next to the cargo hold.

"Sorry, Doc," Jayne replied, not sounding sorry at all. "Nobody leaves. Everything's sealed up tight."

Simon gaped. "If you don't let me through, she could _die!_ "

"I let you through now," Jayne said grimly, "we all die."

The vacuum of space sucked out the tornado of fire, where it quickly dissipated. Mal, satisfied, closed the doors again.

-X-

It's hard to navigate the objects strewn about the cargo hold, but the blonde managed with his injured charge. As instructed, they arrive at the medbay.

" _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once_."

-X-

Mal, Wash, and Jayne carry Zoe and place her gently onto the examination table. Simon, who had been following, begins right away with diagnosing her.

Mal, ever the level-headed one in a tight spot, sends Kaylee down to the engine room. He should have listened to her. She had told him _months_ ago, before they picked up Doc and the rest, that this would happen. He could have skipped a few lunches, had only one serving at dinner... He could have saved up. The part was cheap.

But he ignored her.

" _Wash flies the ship. Kaylee fixes the ship. I have to trust they can do their job..._ "

Kaylee did her job. _He_ didn't. He was a Captain, _gorramit!_

Wash was much harder to convince to leave his wife's side, but he did.

-X-

Calmly, Wash replies: "Yeah. This is all very do-able."

A younger Wash – with a mustache – extricates himself from underneath the console. _Serenity_ is parked now. They got it fixed, but they need a pilot.

Mal is impressed with the guy's credentials, but Zoe instantly dislikes him. She doesn't know why – Mal suspects the mustache – but it doesn't matter either. He's their first, and best, choice.

-X-

Zoe flat-lines. All but Mal and Simon panic. The Captain is quick to assist in the resuscitation of his XO and friend. They resort to a shot of pure adrenaline...straight to the heart.

-X-

Mal cannot help the grunt of pain as he dresses his wound. Whatever was in that bullet – uranium, polonium, whatever – was in his bloodstream, and he could feel the chill like a kiss of death washing over him even as he instructed the former Operative.

River's protector watched stoically, because that was all he _could_ do. Unless it was River, he may as well not even be there.

He had no idea why the blonde was helping him now. Did his and River's father-daughter-type relationship cause the blonde to associate her stability with his existence?

He stood, and almost fell until Naruto began supporting him again, still holding the catalyzer they needed to repair the ship.

" _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once_."

So long as he was there to catch him, Mal wouldn't need that adrenaline shot.

-X-

Kaylee explains the problem to her Captain. They're dead in the water, and they have no life support. Most of the air they would have had was either vented with or used by the fire.

Eventually, they'd just...die.

–

Simon is immersing himself in work. He knows better than them all what happens during suffocation. He's trying not to think about it.

It was his birthday.

Inara is a small, but grateful, distraction as well.

–

River is in the kitchen still, with Shepard Book. She's on the floor, Book is reading the Bible at the counter. She reassures him somewhat, then explains that they'll freeze before they suffocate.

Book is no longer assured.

–

Mal is arguing with a sarcastic Wash on the bridge. Their choice of route has made it so no one will stumble across them. They're too close to Reaver territory. But Wash's worry over his wife has led him to making poor judgment calls in their effort to get a signal to... _anyone_.

Mal, however, has a whole crew to think about, and cannot afford to be in such a state. Their argument attracts Jayne, who tells them to stop. Coming from Jayne, that's saying something.

-X-

Mal and Naruto are nearly to the engine room.

Just a few more feet...

-X-

It is becoming very apparent that Bester, their mechanic, is not as good as his resume alludes to. He told the Captain they would be in the air in four days, tops.

It's been two weeks.

In the engine room, Bester is having hot, sweaty sex with a young redhead.

It also becomes very apparent that she knows more about engines than their designers, mayhaps. She attributes it to natural talent. Whatever the reason, Mal hires her on the spot, and Bester is left on that barely-terraformed hunk of space rock.

-X-

Mal sees Kaylee holding a catalyzer, but it is twisted horribly and completely scorched and melted. It is useless as a part. Mal, however, refuses to believe that such a piece of nothing is the reason his ship is about to kill his crew.

-X-

Mal desperately tries to insert the spare part, but his slippery hands make it difficult. He turns to the blonde, but the catalyzer slips through his fingers in the process. It falls into the deep recesses of the engine.

He disbelievingly stares after it.

" _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once._ "

He really wishes he could shut that up.

-X-

Mal explains the situation to the huddled crew. He decides to split them into two groups, using both escape shuttles in hopes that one of the three of them will get noticed and lead help to the others.

River refuses to leave, and Simon must use a phrase to render her unconscious – Eta kooram nah smech – until they are far enough away.

Inara follows him. He ignores her trying to talk to him. He's afraid of what she might say.

-X-

Mal shows Inara the shuttle, but she is initially dismissive of it. She lays down ground rules, but he has broken every single one since then and she hasn't left. She eventually buys the shuttle. The arrangement helped him more than it ever did her.

-X-

So many things are left unsaid as she prepares the shuttle. Whatever the reason, they can't even tell each other how they really feel when they may never see each other again. They hope one day they can.

–

Wash made a way for him to recall the ships in case of a miracle. It is a big red button. Mal doubts it'll be used, but pretends to appreciate it. He can tell Wash is distracted, so allows him to be with Zoe.

–

Jayne has concentrated most of what little air is left on the top deck, to buy Mal more time, by making it a lower pressure zone. It more than likely won't be enough. Wash and Simon carry, first Zoe, then River into the shuttle. They shut the door.

Book, Kaylee, and Jayne enter the other shuttle quickly, but Inara's gaze lingers. It takes all he has to not run up there and join them. Jayne begins to shut the door, and she darts in. The moment is gone.

He is alone.

The two ships depart as he makes his way to the bridge.

He is not as alone as he thought.

Naruto is in the co-pilot's chair. He had been unconscious under the table since Zoe slammed into him. He woke up just in time to hear the shuttles detach.

Mal offers the blonde a blanket, but it is refused. He sits in the pilot's chair. He is cold and tired from lack of oxygen.

-X-

A freezing mist wraps around his legs as he lifts the cover off the silver crate.

"Let's see what a man like you would kill for..."

"No! Don't!"

Mal kicks the top away, where it clatters on the floor. Slowly the mist dissipates, revealing a male and female in their late teens. They're curled up in the fetal position, and the box is perfectly conformed to their bodies.

This is clearly not what Mal was expecting. He looks at the teens. At Simon. At the teens.

"Huh," he says eloquently.

Before anything else can be said, the box explodes violently. The tanned blonde male is crouched protectively over the pale brunette female, while a visible heat haze protects their modesty.

"River," Simon calls out to the girl, his hand outstretched. He flinches back as three red lines are now on his hand courtesy of the snarling male. The female, River, is visibly traumatized.

She begins crying, and babbling in a language reminiscent of Mandarin, but none of them understand it.

Only the blonde does, and his tone is soothing. She eventually falls asleep, and it takes Simon ten minutes to get the blonde to take her to the Medbay.

Simon tells them of how River was taken by the Alliance due to her...gifted nature. How, when he tried to leave with her, she insisted on bringing him along. How he was once an Operative, the right hand of the Alliance; the instrument of their will. How she was psychic, and how he was a Spec. Ops. soldier.

-X-

Mal is awakened by Naruto, while an unfamiliar face is on the Vid. Monitor. The ship that is nose-to-nose with _Serenity_ is easily twice as large as the Firefly-class vessel.

" _Firefly Serenity... We caught your distress beacon. You the captain? The other one wasn't very...forthcoming with information._ "

Mal coughed lightly, a puff of white escaping past his lips. He breathes heavily for a few seconds, getting as much air as he normally would with a single breath.

"He doesn't talk much," Mal explained simply, before relaying what information he knew. The former Operative is tense before he darts away further into the ship.

-X-

" _Well, it's possible we might have something that could do ya... We just came from a big salvage job on Ita Moon._ "

"I'd appreciate it," Mal said gratefully, glancing back.

" _Trouble is... How can I know for certain your story is true? Ambush could be waitin' for me and my people on the other side. Where'd blondie go?_ "

Mal shrugged helplessly. "My shuttles have been launched, I ain't got no life support... And he does what he wants. He came with another of my crew as her protector. She's on one of the shuttles, so he won't be protecting her when you get here." He took a few gulping breaths afterwords. Explaining that kid was going to kill him one of these days.

But he'd probably save him from it.

" _I don't expect to see any weapons when we board,_ " the man says as an ultimatum.

"And I _do_ expect to see that engine part before I open the door," Mal amends, causing the man to smile.

" _I feel like we can do business, Captain._ "

The screen fades to black, but Mal doesn't press the button to recall the two ships. He doesn't trust them, and wishes he had a gun small enough to hide somewhere.

It isn't very much later that the airlocks of the two ships latch together.

The blonde is still nowhere to be found, and Mal hopes he is around.

The Captain of the _Walden_ appears at the door, and presses the needed part against the window. Mal nods, opening the airlock doors.

A tremendous rush of air surrounds Mal. He savors it, his eyes closed for a beat as he breathes the properly oxygenated air deeply.

Opening his eyes, he is greeted to five guns pointed at him, courtesy of the Captain and four of his crew.

Mal raises his hands in surrender.

"Check him," the Captain orders one of them, who frisks Mal. "Search the ship," he says to another. "Start at the cockpit, work your way down. Look for a blonde kid. Kill 'im if you see him."

"This what you meant by ambush?" Mal asks sarcastically, to which the Captain smiles. It's somewhat familiar.

"We're just verifying your story," he says. He turns to the last two. "Go. You find anyone on board not supposed to be, shoot 'em."

"Thought we were gonna be reasonable about this?" Mal asks as they pass him, confident Naruto can handle them.

"Reason?" the Captain says incredulously, and it's the same tone he used all those years ago...

-X-

It was the day he met Jayne, his weapons expert. He still needed a medic – Kaylee was an excellent cook – but they were playing it safe for now.

Or, at least, they thought they were.

It was easy to bring Jayne over to their side, when he was only getting 7% and had to share a bunk with the overweight member of their group.

Mal gave him 10%, free run of the kitchen, and his own room, just like Kaylee and Wash, while Zoe and Mal got 15%. Everything else went to _Serenity_.

-X-

That's how it _was_.

Now that he thought about it, the Captain had a noticeable limp.

The others begin returning to the cargo bay.

"Ship's clear, Cap'n," the first one back said.

"You check the engine room?" the Captain asked.

"Like he said," the man nodded. "Catalyzer's blown. That's all he needs."

Mal really needed Nathan here. "Anything that's worth anything is right here," he explained, glad the money was hidden. "Take a look around, decide what's fair..." Hopefully, that gave Nikolai enough time to do whatever it is he's planning.

' _Please be planning something..._ '

A chill went up Mal's spine.

' _Ah, Gorr-_ '

"Already decided."

 _ **Sma-Bang!**_

A throwing knife, made of African Blackwood from Earth-That-Was – one of the tens of millions of plants, animals, and fungi saved from the dying planet – completely shattered as it impacted the revolver, causing the shot to hit Mal's shoulder instead of his stomach.

Making an impossible leap from behind a few crates against the wall, Nigel was now in front of Mal, the Colt 1911 he just got aimed haphazardly at the five men.

They laughed, thinking he was stupid. The recoil would shatter his wrist if he fired like that.

"Whatcha gonna do, blondie? Break your hand at us?" They laughed again.

" _ **Ba-Ba-Bang!**_ "

A triple-tap ended the laughter with screams of anguish. The Captain was shot in his other leg, the one on his right had been hit in his thigh, and the man beside _him_ was shot in the spleen. Noel was giving them all a flat stare, before he glanced back at Mal.

He knows what he has to do.

"Leave the catalyzer," he says calmy, feeling _something_ as it entered his bloodstream, numbing his arm. The man lays it on the floor. "Take your men and go," he says slowly, trying not to let the pain he's beginning to feel show on his face.

"You'd have done the same," the Captain accuses. The pain he feels is clearly contorting his face.

"We can already see I haven't," Mal counters. "...Now get the hell off my ship."

It is a slow process as the two uninjured men drag the three shot men through the airlock back to the _Walden_.

The entire time, Noel stands there with his gun held in a lazy grip, somewhat aimed in the pirates' general direction, and Mal stands ramrod straight, despite his knees wanting to buckle.

Slowly, Mal makes his way to the control panel, not falling through sheer force of will, and closes the airlock door.

It shuts with a resounding _thunk_.

He finally lets himself collapse, and isn't as surprised as he would have been a week ago as Noah offers him his hand.

" _Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once. Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once._ "

-X-

A trail of blood leads from the cargo bay, to the infirmary, and finally to the engine room where Naruto has fished out the needed part. Mal instructs him how to install it. It is arduous work – his consciousness is wavering – but it is finally done. The turbine begins spinning with some help; the part works. The alarm stops. The lights turn on. She's alive.

"The bridge," Mal gasps out. "We have to..."

He can't even finish the sentence before the blonde picks him up and half-drags him to his destination. Mal is trying to walk, but it off-balances the former Operative every other step.

He slumps into the pilot's chair, and presses the button just as he passes out. The blonde takes his seat back in the co-pilot's chair after covering Mal back up.

It would take some time before it wasn't still freezing.

-X-

Mal awoke to familiar voices. Whether they were familiar because they tried to rob him, or familiar because they had been enjoying cake before everything went to _niushi_ became apparent as he heard that odd Mandarin-derived language of the two Alliance experiments.

Zoe and Naruto were in two of the other bunks, while River was fussing over the blood-covered blonde in that weird language. Everyone else was around Zoe, talking about Mal.

"I told her it was Mal's, but she won't listen to me," Simon complained.

"Well we should do something about it all... He shouldn't be walking around like that, and I don't think it's something Mal should see when he wakes up," Inara reasoned.

The conversation slowly dissolved into a one-sided insult match between Inara and Jayne.

"How is he?" Zoe finally asked Simon.

"Well, the shot, itself, was non-vital, though he would've died if it hit closer to his heart. It was stamped with Polonium, so he got lucky it hit his shoulder."

Zoe nodded, and glanced over at her Captain, only to see Mal was staring right back.

"Welcome back, sir," she said, smiling. Everyone around her follows her example and greets the now-conscious Captain.

"I go somewhere?" Mal asked groggily, feeling like his tongue was working against him to make coherent sounds.

"Very nearly," Book joked.

"We thought we lost you," Inara said worriedly, emotions on her face no man could discern even if the Rosetta Stone was built specifically for that purpose.

"Well I've been right here," he said instead of trying. He glanced at all the crew, and only just now notices the tube in Wash's arm. "You okay, Wash?" he asked in a concerned voice.

A small smile tugs at Wash's lips. "Yeah, Mal... I'm fine," he says in an amused tone.

Mal is visibly confused at this statement.

He later blames the drugs.

"You got a...a thing in your arm."

"Yeah," Wash said softly instead of explaining.

"You might want to rest," Simon said, cutting the conversation off. "We had to remove a lot of blood, and most of it couldn't be put back. You're also more than heavily medicated."

"Oh," Mal said simply. Then, realizing something important, said, "I forgot about him," he admitted.

"We all did," Zoe admitted.

"I'd be dead if it won't for him," Mal said with a shudder. "He _aimed_ for my heart, but Naruto hit it off-target..."

"The shards...," Inara gasped. "African Blackwood is the strongest wood we brought from Earth-That-Was. When you work it, you're supposed to treat it like metal..."

"No wonder my knife was dull," Jayne muttered.

"B-But it _shattered_...," Wash said in disbelief. "How hard did he throw it?"

They all glanced over to the subject of their conversation, who seemed oblivious to River's light blush as he removed his bloody shirt to show his scarred but undamaged chest with a runner's build.

Simon was distracted from replying by Kaylee bounding into the room.

"Hey, Cap'n," she said brightly, skipping past Simon.

"Hey," Mal said, bemused.

"You fixed the ship," she praised. "Good job."

"Actually it was him," Mal said, motioning across the room.

Simon, with no more Kaylee's bounding in to distract him, finally ordered everyone out. "Alright, I have to insist. If you're not hurt or helping, please leave. The Captain needs to rest."

Mal yawned, laying his head back. "Yeah... Think Doc might not be wrong about that one... I just need a few..." He yawned again, his eyes half closed. "Y'all gonna be here when I wake up?"

"We'll be here," Inara assured softly.

Mal smiled, his eyes now closed fully. "'kay... That's good."

As he drifts away, Mal can still hear talking.

" _A real beauty, ain't she? Yezzir. A right smart purchase, this vessel._ "

-X-

He's speaking to Mal, but Mal isn't paying attention, not really. The ship he's speaking of is big and yellow, its engines woefully small for the vessel's bulk. Vital hoses are out in the open.

It is not a pretty ship.

"Tell you what: you buy this ship, treat 'er proper... She'll be with ya for the rest a your natural life."

He turns to Mal ,who is turned away from him. "Son? Hey, son? You heard a word I've been saying?"

Mal hasn't, because he's been sold since he saw it.

Serenity sits across the lot, shiny silver gleaming in the morning sun. Rust is non-existent on its hull, and its rear engine alone is a third the size of the ship.

He's in love for the first time in his life.

-X-

 **5.25k is what this chapter comes in at. I decided to give you all a little extra since I'm somewhat late to put this out. This is 'Out of Gas' with a little bit of 'Serenity' thrown in.**

 _ **Protecting River**_ **has 9 reviews, 41 faves, and 48 follows** **as of 4:16PM EST 9/15/15. Thanks to everyone for your support.**

 **Ja Ne!**


	4. Bushwhacked 1

KrossoverXKing presents the fourth chapter of:

 _ **Protecting River**_

A _Naruto_ and _Serenity/Firefly_ crossover

neither of which are owned by me

 **Jeez-us! Has it really been over a year? I am so sorry about that everyone. As I've said in my other stories, all I can do is promise it won't happen again and move on. Member Ricky12440 asked for more Naruto/River moments, so I chose _Bushwhacked_ to do it in. With how long this chapter is getting, I'll have to break it up a little, but after this episode is done, there will be another movie moment. JSYK.**

-X-

Mal was back on his feet by the next day, and the group decided on a ball game in the cargo hold to pass the time.

Above them, Naruto and River followed the six players intently with their eyes, while Simon watched the two of them with a critical eye. Ever since yesterday, he wasn't openly hostile to the blonde when said boy was with River, though he still kept a watch on the pair.

A loud bang reverberated through the cargo hold as Mal impacted an empty metal crate with his back, sending it toppling off the one it had been perched on.

' _Zaogao! Container clamps are failin',_ ' he thought despondently, adding it to his mental checklist of everything _Serenity_ needed. Ever since their own Operative had been the only reason Mal was still alive and his ship was kicking, he decided to be more proactive in managing the ship's expenses.

"Nancy! Container clamps!" He called out to the blonde far above them before getting back into the game. He was likely to forget it all, so had a back-up just in case. He knew the blonde heard him; didn't need acknowledgment.

"We're dead," he told Zoe once she was close enough. She had apparently called a time-out.

"I imagine we still have a shot, sir," she responded as she pulled him back to join the group in a rough half-circle around the ring.

"And I distinctly remember your imagination was _tian di wu yowng_ ," Mal rebutted.

"We've got 'em on the run now!" Book, the third member of their team, replied, not privy to their conversation.

"I'm glad our cunning strategy of getting our asses whooped has finally started confoundin' them," Mal replied to the holy man dryly, eying their opponents. Though it was only Jayne, Kaylee, and Wash, the fact of the matter was that his weapons expert and mechanic had impressive teamwork.

"Somebody cover my wife!" Wash, who currently had the ball, shouted.

"Every time you ain't lookin'," Jayne called out, just loud enough for his teammate to hear. It was enough for the pilot to lose the ball. Though Zoe made a valiant effort to get the ball for her team, Kaylee was quicker, if not closer.

Seeing Simon now paying attention after Wash's shout, Kaylee dodged Mal, causing him to sprawl on the floor. She jumped, the ball arcing through the air and going straight in.

"Don't s'pose I could threaten to put her off the boat, she does that again?" Mal inquired of his second-in-command.

"You could, sir," she replied dryly, "but she's the only one who knows how anything works."

"Fair 'nough," Mal sighed, intent on taking the ball from the girl instead.

The game began pouring onto the stairway, the captain chasing the mechanic.

Up above the hustle and bustle, Inara emerged from her shuttle, smiling at the family dynamics as Kaylee got on Jayne's shoulders to both get away from Mal and score a consecutive goal. She stands next to Simon, the game below a welcome background noise.

The greetings they give each other are short, but cordial. Neither knows the other very well, but there is no animosity between them.

"Who's winning?" Inara asked to keep the conversation flowing. Due in part to her nature as a companion, but also because of her nature in general, she couldn't just _not_ talk to someone she knew and was on non-hostile terms with.

Simon shook his head, He had been watching for about twenty minutes on and off, but the rules they outlined in the beginning were rarely – if ever – followed. If you were trying to get away from someone, it was perfectly fine to go out of bounds. Holding the ball close to your chest was almost the only way they carried it. Wash would hand the ball over to his wife if she demanded it of him, while Shepard Book gave it to Kaylee if she asked nice enough.

There was also the fact that one person would spontaneously switch teams without telling the others, while the other team had apparently done the same. There were no visual or verbal clues that he could tell, either, but everyone down there seem to know who was on what team at all times.

"I...can't really tell. They don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules, if there even are any."

Next to him, River giggled as Naruto spoke something in that _foreign_ foreign dialect that only those two apparently knew, causing him to glance over at the pair.

They seemed focused on the game, however, so he turned his attention back to Inara.

"There are," she promised, "but this far out, you usually don't play by them."

Simon rolled his eyes at the meta conversation, while the Companion glanced over at the two Alliance experiments. River was now speaking to the blonde, who nodded occasionally, tapping a seemingly random pattern on the railing.

"How are they?"

Simon didn't even pretend to know the blonde's mental state as his speech focused solely on his little sister. "She's...good. Better, at the very least. She has her days, though, like the day before." The day when River found the boy covered in blood, he didn't have to say. Albeit it was Mal's, and only because the blonde had carried him throughout the ship to fix it.

At the same time (and it loathed Simon to know this), her best days were the ones where they hid from the crew together in the ship's many ducts. At those times, Kaylee usually went in after them for dinner if they weren't there already.

"Don't we all," Inara said, smiling softly in regards to his diagnosis of the younger Tam sibling.

"There are even moments where she seems like the little sister I used to know." He didn't need to tell her it was when she was with the former Operative. "But then it passes." When any other member of the crew – Simon included – get too close. "And she still won't talk about what they did to her at the Academy, so I don't even know where to begin looking for the problem aside from 'brain'." There were a few more specific terms than that, but he didn't want to bore her with technicality, and it was possible that all the areas had some sort of damage or tampering done to them.

"Perhaps she's not sure about it, herself," Inara suggested softly, now staring at the Doctor, and not the patients. Many emotions passed across his face that she had seen on married men. Regret, self-loathing, self-pity, anger... She had no context for it, but planned to ask the other two ladies on the ship about it.

"She dreams about it," Simon admitted. "Well, nightmares... I know that much. I can't even begin to imagine what the government..." He cut himself off, staring the woman next to him in the face for a mite longer than she was comfortable with before he spoke. "Did you know I supported Unification?"

"So did I," Inara admitted, surprising even herself with how easily she trusted the young man. Not even Mal or Zoe knew that about her, and she planned to keep it from the former Browncoats as long as possible. Granted, back then, she was more driven by selfish, carnal reasons.

Those who supported Unification were usually poor Outworlders who 'hit it and quit it' as quickly as possible. The politicians and nobles that usually kept her calendar – and bed – full were like that as well, granted, but there more often than not was a son or aide who finished what their superior couldn't...and most spectacularly as well.

"I believed everything they told us," Simon stated wistfully. If she had to guess, he was no more than ten when the Unification War – or War for Independence should you believe you lost – ended. Having been born and raised on a Core World, it was likely he was brainwashed by propaganda. "How the Alliance would solve everyone's problems. Right the wrongs... I wanted to be a part of that."

He shook his head sadly at his younger self's naivete.

"Things are better for a greater many than they would have otherwise," Inara told him quietly. She shuddered to think what the 'Verse would be like if everywhere was like the Outworlds.

Simon agreed. "Three years ago, I couldn't have imagined being on a ship like this, with people like that." A bunch of fugitives with cargo that was either smuggled, stolen, or scavenged? Before River's coded messages, he never planned on going past the Halo unless he was on Persephone at the time.

"They're good people," Inara assured him. Some of them could be a bit abrasive, but they were all good people underneath it all.

Even Jayne could be relied on in a pinch with the assault rifle he affectionately called "Vera", should one of the crew be in danger.

Simon sighed, running his fingers through his hair and disturbing the perfectly combed look. "Yeah, I know. I didn't mean for it to sound like that." He smiled at the Companion. "And I'm truly grateful...to all of you. For Captain Reynolds for allowing us to stay on board, despite our bounties and the trouble we cause... for just _being_ there. You're all not what I imagined when I imagined 'space pirates' in my younger years." He paused before jokingly adding, "Well, Jayne is."

Inara simply smiled at the accurate description of the weapons nut, but immediately frowned when his smile dropped and he continued talking. "I just... I don't know if I'll be able to help her here. And I need to help her."

"Simon," she began softly, startling him by placing a soft hand on his cheek, "you are. I think, deep down, your sister understands what you risked to rescue her from that place...rescue _them_ from that place."

Simon opened his mouth, more than likely to refute risking anything for the blonde, but Inara shushed him.

"You and I know, better than most, how the Alliance works. Everything they do or create has more than one function, and they all are equally important in different circumstances. River and Naruto are, no doubt, no exception."

This time Simon stayed silent as his face was cupped by her delicate fingers, her thumbs massaging his temple in order to reduce stress. This normally cost in the range of tens of thousands of credits had she done this for a client, but Simon was something more than a job.

"Believe me when I tell you...leaving your world behind, that of an accomplished Core World doctor who graduated from the University of Osiris, all to risk your life to rescue her from that place. It is an incredibly selfless act."

"We're wanted fugitives, and we're putting you at risk."

"We're all running from something, Simon," she replied ambiguously, snapping him out of his blissful haze enough to where he stared at her curiously.

It wasn't enough for her to explain, but her soft smile let him know that, in a sense, she had been where he was, and had made it out fine.

It was enough for him to smile back.

Suddenly, a red light flashed as an alarm blares from further inside the ship, breaking up Mal and Wash's tussle for the ball. It also breaks the moment between the two Core Worlders as they begin making their way to the floor.

"Proximity alert," Zoe said, recognizing the tone. "Someone must've crossed our path." Mal had so many things on his mind, it was hard for him to keep track of all the nuances of the alarms. There was a different one for every little thing that could go wrong with his baby.

And a catalyzer sensor was one of the first things he was going to buy when they docked. The piece of _feiwu_ was such a nothing part that the sensor that checked if it was working was an optional purchase. Not even Allied Spacecraft Corporation made the gorram thing. Firefly Ship Works designed their own, but due to a bunch of legal jargon, couldn't install them when they fitted the ships, and instead had to sell them as aftermarket parts.

They also gave you one if you got at least one upgrade, though Mal never got that option since he bought his old Series 3 from a salvage yard after the War.

"Oh my god," Wash said, faintly alarmed. "Who or what could it be?" he asked with a faint amount of emergency and fear in his voice. "We're all dooomed!" he cried, dragging out the word unnecessarily. "WHO'S FLYING THIS THING!?"

At that last outburst, everyone gave the pilot an incredulous stare. He tossed the ball through the hoop one last time before turning away from the unappreciative crowd. "Oh, right. That would be me," he deadpanned.

"I guess we're a man short now," Kaylee replied, though she didn't seem too broken up about it.

Jayne, who had went to retrieve the ball, was quick-witted – and dirty – enough to retort, "Little Kaylee's always a man short," earning him a good-natured punch in the arm as the smiling redhead turned to the object of her affection.

"Whaddya say, Doc? Want to play for our side? Inara won't mind."

The black-haired woman gave the mechanic a curious look at that statement, but neither she nor Simon could answer as Shepard Book spoke up.

"Actually, I think I'll take a break as well. I'm not as young as I once was."

"You're even now," Simon replied helpfully, missing the hurt look on Kaylee's face as the blonde and brunette – who had had been sitting on a catwalk forty feet in the air – dropped down in the center of the group.

"We know how to play now," River said with a serious look, Naruto nodding decisively next to her.

"Do you know how to play?" Mal asked his XO.

"No idea, sir," Zoe replied to her CO. They had been winging it the whole time, just repeating what they heard when they caught snippets of Mid-World games at the beginning. They had no idea what it all actually meant.

-X-

Firefly _Serenity_ – Bridge

-X-

Wash absently shut off the proximity alarm as he slid into the comfortable seat he had installed. In fact, it was the second selfish purchase he bought with his cut of _Serenity_ 's pay, the first being the ring he proposed to Zoe with.

A Peregrine light transport vessel seemed almost devoid of power as it spun in place. Resolving to extend the sensor range on the particular alarm it triggered, he proceeded to lean forward in order to get a look at the name of the ship the Reavers had attacked.

Because there was no doubt it was a Reaver attack. Bandits and pirates either destroyed the ships – along with any evidence of them being there – or took them then and there. Ships one planned to return to were supposed to have their emergency lights on, but this one was nearly completely dark.

If the Reavers left a ship, however, it was for one of two reasons.

They were either coming back for it to add to their grotesque fleet, or they had left people there so they had a readily available source of either sexual relief, food, or clothing, depending on their level of depravity that particular day. Of course, such scenarios usually only happened when one crossed paths with a raiding party with a specific destination in mind.

A body smacked the window with a muted _thump_ as it slowly slid along the viewport's visual range. Wash, horrified at the eyeless sockets, purple face, mutilated skin, and frozen look of terror watch him, he jerks the _Serenity_ out of reflex.

-X-

Firefly _Serenity_ – Cargo Bay

-X-

Everyone but the two Alliance experiments nearly fall, with Naruto and River merely shifting their feet at the sudden lurch the floor made.

It was enough for them to rush to the front of the ship, Mal leading.

"You have a stroke or somethin' Wash?" Mal half-joked.

"Near enough," he muttered, rubbing his chest. To be honest, it felt like he had a _heart attack_.

"What happ-" Zoe began, but cut herself off after following her husband's line of sight.

" _Wu de ma_ ," Jayne breathed. Everyone had looked up as Zoe did, and saw the ghost ship, too.

"I have to agree," Shepard Book replied, horrifyingly mesmerized at the silent ship.

"Any survivors?" Mal asked, trying to figure out what type of Reaver attack it was.

Wash shrugged. "Hailed once. But if whoever's there's as healthy as the guy we ran over, can't imagine staying on the line to find out."

"Got a name?" Zoe asked this time.

"I was trying," her husband muttered, squinting. "It's too far...too dark."

"Get us closer, then," Mal ordered. "I'll keep hailing."

"What is it?" Simon asked either of the females next to him as Wash began carrying out his order. The doctor was too far back, not to mention behind Jayne.

But it was River's faint whisper from just outside the door that both answers and terrifies him.

Not the least of which was because of how she couldn't see the ship from her position facing away from it behind a wall, and Naruto was growling at the inanimate object, teeth bared and normally blue eyes slitted crimson.

" _Ghosts..._ " whispered his sister.

It took Wash five minutes to close the distance and match _Serenity_ with the _Waybach_ , as they learned it was called. They were facing the side of the ship, just far enough away that they could see the entire derelict ship, while they spun the same way as it did, albeit slower. This gave them longer to see each part of the ship.

They match its speed and spin, they'd watch the same small part the whole time.

They spin in the direction opposite it, the speed at which something would go by would be the total speed for both ships. If the _Waybach_ was going 40 rpm and _Serenity_ was going 20 rpm in the opposite direction, any area would pass by the window at 60 rpm.

By spinning the same way, however, with the _Waybach_ going 40 rpm and _Serenity_ going 20 rpm, any area would pass by at 20 rpm, the difference between the two ships' speed.

Those numbers were an exaggeration, of course, though the math was right. The _Waybach_ was spinning at about 6 rpm, _Serenity_ half that. The derelict ship did a full rotation in front of them every twenty seconds.

"What's it say?" Mal asked when a message appeared on the screen in front of Wash, who proceeded to open it. It was from the ship itself, courtesy of an outdated piece of Alliance tech that was basically an expensive IFF combined with flight data reader, including all ship recordings.

" _Waybach_... Converted Peregrine light transport ship offering one-way ticket from Meadow to New Kasmir... Apparently the Alliance sent people there before it was finished terraforming, and this was one of the ships to answer the call to get them off-world since the Alliance went dark on them. They used the same method we did; edging on Reaver space so the DSS's couldn't figure out that all their settlers were leaving."

"Port thrust is gone, 's why she's spinning," Kaylee muttered. "She don't wanna be parked like that."

"Tell you what I think," Jayne said, crossing his arms. "I think that fellow hid from the Reavers, then came out and saw what they did to his old lady. Now he's probably some bleedin' heart who can't live without her, to cowardly ta take a gun or blade to himself, so he decides to just press a button and take a swim through space, see how how fast his blood'd boil out his ears so they can see each other again."

"You're a very _up_ person," Wash commented sarcastically after that morbid tirade.

"Shouldn't we report this?" Book asked, always the moral compass of the group.

Mal snorted. "To who? Alliance? Right, 'cuz they're gonna run right out to the edge here lickety-split to make sure these tax-payers they left to die on a rock are okay."

There were many ways one could die on a non-terraformed planet, depending on how close to completion it was. A slow suffocation if the atmosphere wasn't finished, starvation or dehydration if weather patterns hadn't formed, freezing if the ozone layer hadn't took hold...and those were just the threats the machines fixed. There was also the threat of carnivorous indigenous lifeforms that they could get rid of, which were taken care of near the end.

"Then we have to," Book said decisively.

"Rudderless boat this far out, anyone make it past Reavers probably canned fish by now," Jayne imagined.

"You can't know that," Kaylee, ever the optimist, declared heatedly.

"Said prolly," Jayne defended. "'Sides, if someone's needin' help, why ain't they beaming no distress call?"

Wash looked at the specs for that particular vessel as he thought aloud. "Probably fit fifteen, twenty families on a boat that size, you pack 'em tight enough."

" _Families_ ," Inara gasped out, clutching the hand of the person next to her.

"Jayne's not wrong," Zoe said, immediately feeling wrong, herself, for saying such. "There's no distress beacon. And since they're obviously in distress, that means no one _can_ turn it on."

"Like a settler who doesn't know how," Book retorted. "That simply gives us more incentive to do the right thing."

Jayne patted the shepherd on the shoulder. "How 'bout you just say a prayer while we slide on by. That oughta do it."

Book was not swayed, and very nearly swatted Jayne's hand away. "Need I remind you the story of the Good Samaritan?"

"Rather you didn't," Mal muttered, before letting Book hear. "We'll check it out."

"So we search and rescue now?" Jayne asked the captain sarcastically with a hint of anger. They were low on funds, and having a bunch of refugees would tear through their food supply like a pack of varren.

"No," Mal said firmly, shutting down Jayne's temper. "but the Shepherd's not wrong. Could be a few survivors. Not many, but maybe two or three. And if not, well... Let's just say no one's gonna mind if we take a look around, see there's not something of value they might've left behind.

Jayne...honestly hadn't thought about that. Had it been Reavers or something else, the people wouldn't have had time to grab everything. Small items like jewelery were usually lost in the hustle and bustle of dying, and it was ripe for the picking for whoever stumbled upon it next.

But he had to save face. "Right. Yeah. No. Uh, someone could be hurt."

Another light punch let him know Kaylee was still next to him, and saw through his obvious lie.

"Wash, hook us up," Mal declared as he left the bridge, back down to the Cargo Bay.

-X-

It took no time at all for Wash to complete the maneuver. He simply had to wait for the airlock, match speed, and get close. He also sent a few cables to latch onto the other ship, some of them for stability, one to hack further into the computer, and another to give it more power for lights and anything else they may need.

Simon entered the Cargo Bay with his portable med-kit, the red box filled with his own collection of items he figured someone stuck on a ship for a long period of time would need, as well as some general purpose items in case there were any slip-ups with the crew.

Ahead, Mal and Zoe were suiting up as River and Naruto watched the two with an unwavering stare. It's eerie how similar the two teens sometimes were, given how different their conditioning was.

"Where you think you're headed?" The voice, coupled by the metallic _ka-chink_ as a weapon was loaded let Simon know that the speaker was Jayne before he even turned to face the rugged man.

"I thought I'd offer my services, in case anyone on board required medical attention," Simon replied cordially. He held up his med-kit for emphasis, to let Jayne know he came prepared.

"Yeah, well, Cap and Zoe are going in first. They'll holler if they need you."

"But-"

" _That's_ _how_ _it's_ _done_ ," Jayne hissed darkly. "Are you deaf? It's likelier than not that Reavers attacked, which means ain't no one aboard'll be needing that kinda help."

"What abou-"

But Jayne wasn't done. "You always tryin' to be in the wrong place at the wrong _gorram_ time. You're on this ship, got the Alliance lookin' for Fireflies. We're venting out the fire, you try to open the door like some moonbrained _chwen_. Now you're here, running somewhere we don't know what's what... Eventually, you're gonna get hurt from all that stupid and I ain't gonna help you."

" _Chiu se,_ " Simon spat, glaring at the taller man before stalking off.

" _Gohn shi_ ," Jayne said to the retreating doctor, taking back everything he just said. Not that he'd admit it, of course.

-X-

Peregrine _Waybach_ – Airlock

-X-

The airlock shuts with a resounding _THUNK_ as Mal and Zoe sweep the hallway with their weapons, having taped flashlights to them.

 _BANG!_

The shot both of them fired at the wraith-like figure that brushed past them impacts the floor, a tanned hand having aimed the muzzles down.

River continues to sway like a ghost down the hallway. Naruto suddenly unlatches their helmets as he walks past, catching up to his counterpart. He begins walking backwards with her, tapping her forehead insistently. The odd action seems to not do what he intended.

Or, at least, they hoped he didn't intend for her to headbutt him on the nose.

Despite the blood flowing, the blonde simply stops, but River flows around him like her namesake, miffing the boy. When he grabs her arm to stop her, he is overbalanced as she continued walking, not slowed at all by his interference. He let out a strangled cry of frustration, the first _sound_ they had ever heard out of his mouth.

Visibly upset, but not willing to allow River on the ship alone, Naruto had no choice but to follow her further in the derelict vessel.

Mal and Zoe watched the interaction with bemusement, setting their helmets and gloves on a table in the mess hall as they followed them, but not before seeing the state of that room.

"Whatever happened...happened in a hurry," Mal observed, noting the set tables and food complete with ladles ready to be consumed.

Zoe nodded with his assessment as they caught back up with the two teens. They weren't exactly being cautious, but nor were they rushing recklessly.

Did they know exactly how fast they could go while still being able to search for threats, or did they know if or where the threats were and simply weren't rushing because they didn't want to?

Even as the two disappear around a corner, Mal and Zoe enter the bridge, intent on getting more answers. They had a very good guess, but it was just that: a guess, no matter how educated it may be.

There was more inclination that whatever happened was more than likely blitzed on the crew. As the ship was still habitable, that left Reavers as the only reason which would leave the ship behind.

There was a half-drunk mug of coffee on the arm of the pilot's chair, an open book where the co-pilot would sit. On the holo-table in the center, a board game was in mid-play before it was left to gather dust.

"Everything was left on," Zoe observed, brushing dust away and seeing the dim screens respond. "Ship's in power-saver." She spun in place, noting how nothing was knocked over or out of place. "No sign of a struggle, either. Just-"

"Gone," Mal concluded, pressing play on an incomplete log. Nothing but static met their ears, even as they struggled to listen past the white noise. It was in vain.

As with the _Waybach_ , there was nothing there.

-X-

He is glancing worriedly at her shaking, sweaty frame. The cold metal floor on her bare feet seem to not bother as she stares at something through the walls.

There is a fixed point she stares at, no matter which way she is going. He can only assume it is whatever – or whoever – has her in this state. The only reason she is not screaming aloud is because she is screaming in his head, as are others.

It is a side-effect of their relationship. In order for her mind to carry less strain, most of what she _feels_ goes to him, while she takes care of what she _sees_. It was yet another thing the drugs had inhibited, this connection.

But he hates how they made him _weaker_ than her, though that wasn't really the case. If River didn't want him to stop her, she released a pheromone which made the limit on his strength much more strict, so much so that he literally had just enough strength to grip something, though that grip was easily broken.

" _Screaming... too much screaming. No sleep, only screaming..._ "

It prevented him from stopping her from going further in the ship.

He couldn't see what happened, but the emotions were as clear as they were primal. There was no doubt that Reavers attacked.

He stopped behind River, who was frozen in front of a door, staring at what would be the room's ceiling if a wall wasn't in the way.

He didn't want to...but he had no choice. She wasn't going to leave until she saw whatever it was that she was looking at.

It was then that Mal and Zoe appeared, as the first burst of chakra left the tenketsu on his hand. A steady stream followed afterwords, his control over it causing it to create a marble-sized metaphysical construct that grew exponentially, the whine turning to a screech as four small blades of condensed wind formed like rings on a planet.

Naruto glanced one more time at the nearly catatonic brunette before plunging the attack right next to the electronic lock, completely destroying any form of technology or barrier in a foot-wide circle.

-X-

"Zoe," Mal said, roughly getting the attention of the dark-skinned woman.

"Yes, sir?" Zoe asked absently, still staring at the two stow-aways.

"Why am I still surprised at stuff like this?" he asked, completely serious. Sure, he had seen the boy toss around a Land Stalker and run alongside the Mule, but those were just extreme instances of what Humans could already do. People were strong and threw stuff. People could also run fast. Nora just took it to the extreme.

But that plasma sphere was a whole 'nother ball game. Humans couldn't do _anything_ like that.

"I can only imagine, sir," Zoe deadpanned, the both of them walking forward once the door was open.

It was a testament to the horrors of the War for Independence that neither of them immediately lost their lunch.

It also drove home the atrocities the Alliance had performed on the two teens that the same didn't happen to either of them.

Though at the same time, the blonde was an Operative, so he had more than likely performed some atrocities as well.

Best to not think about that too much.

He pressed the comm in his ear.

"Wash, get Jayne and Doc over here ASAP. Air's breathable."

" _You got it_ ," came the voice of their pilot. " _Uhh... What should I tell them?_ "

Mal knew that was his way of trying to get information, but wasn't having any of it. "That I want them over here ASAP and that the air's breathable."

" _Yessir_ ," Wash replied obediently.

As they waited for the two men, they saw River was still transfixed, her expression neutral as she stared straight up. Her protector was doing the same, but his expression was anything but neutral.

There was fear and anger in equal measure, even as his glowing red eyes failed to tear away from the scene above them.

And no one could fault him for that.

-X-

 **Almost 5.4k, not including AN's. And the episode isn't even a quarter done. I'm seeing anywhere between three and five parts, depending on how it changes due to Naruto's presence and how much explanation everything needs.**

 **For those confused, Naruto is her protector in two instances. He protects her mind from undue stress due to her own power by taking it on himself, and he also protects her blind spot when she is fighting. He was not meant to be stronger than her, though he is most of the time.**

 **Next chapter I'm writing is, of course, T'ZvY, but before that, here's some stats as of 10/30/16, 5:53PM!**

 **Reviews: 20. And such positivity! I'm glad you all like it so much, and I'm sorry it took so long to update.**

 **Follows/Faves: 92/75. Noice. I can only assume there's some crossover. Does anyone know if it will still alert you if you just favorite something, or do you have to follow it?**

 **Communities: 2. Also pretty awesome.**

 **Views: 2,654. The fact that anybody found this is astounding. It's the only Naruto/Serenity crossover, while there is also only one Naruto/Firefly one. I can only assume you found another story and then went to my profile and saw this one.**

 **It's because of you all that this is my second most popular story.**

 **But now I have to talk to you about something very important/personal. If you read this in Chapter 8 of T'ZvY, it's the same, and I encourage you to vote on the poll on my profile page.**

 **Ok, here goes.**

 **I was thinking about creating a . I know, I know, I never wanted to do it either. Coeur Al'Aran has one so he can quit his job. He also offers writing advice and skype calls if you give him $100 a month.**

 **And three people have done it.**

 **I...am not that greedy. Nor am I that talented to offer advice.**

 **I'm a pretty good grammar beta. Y'know, spelling, punctuation, and all that stuff. I do my own beta work, and when I read back, I see maybe one mistake every other chapter, so if there's two of us, it'll be perfect.**

 **I have LibreOffice and Microsoft Word if that matters.**

 **The point is...I _need_ money. I've been searching for a job for almost two months now, but my car was totaled near the end of July 'cuz some idiot ran a red light and t-boned me, and I lost my job the first week of September, limiting my search area to about 5 miles since I have a rickety little bike with a pedal that won't stay on. I live with my mom, and she provides me with a room, utilities, and dinner.**

 **Breakfast and lunch are not a constant promise. _Internet_ is not promised. My mom barely uses it.**

 **What I'm saying is...if I opened one, would you pledge at least a dollar? I think it's a monthly thing, but at the same time, if you do that, I will beta read for you. I'm not a good muse, but I can help with that if you want as well.**

 **I'm supposed to be paying my mom $100 a week for the above-mentioned perks. At the same time, she told me that until I get a job, I can pay her $50 a week.**

 **So my first goal would be $250 a month, and if I reach that, I could rest easy knowing I'd have internet to keep writing, as well as more time to search for a job. I could also increase the chapter length by a thousand words, making them 6-7k word chapters.**

 **At the same time, if it seems like you are really into it, I could up it to $500 a week, and focus full time on writing, meaning the chapters could actually come out two a week. This is just to show I _can_ write this fast. I've been laser-focused on this and spending an hour searching for jobs. But if that happens, I can make this my main focus.**

 **There's a poll on my profile if you think I should open one. I won't if you think it's a bad idea.**

 **Sorry for the long AN, but this is important, and I want your opinion.**

 **As I said, next chapter is Tali'Zorah vas Yoko, then Hart of Gold, a novelization of Pokemon HeartGold. I plan on doing one for each generation, even the 7th(which I paid off Moon earlier today). Orange is Gen 1, Amber is Gen 2, Zircon is Gen 3, Iridium is Gen 4, Ember for Gen 5.1, Cinder for Gen 5.2, Epsilon for Gen 6, and Chrys for Gen 7.**

 **Check it out if you like Pokemon.**

 **Anywho, enough plugging my own story. I'll see you Wednesday with chapter 9.**

 **Ja Ne!**


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